There are many assets above ground and below ground that need to be protected and avoided. Included in these assets are utility lines and components and protected areas, such as archeological sites and habitat of endangered species. There are millions of miles of utility lines around the world, some buried and some above ground. These utility lines include, without limitation, electric power lines, telephone lines, water lines, sewer lines, fiber-optic cable lines, natural gas transmission lines, natural gas distribution lines, and utility lines for transporting hazardous liquids.
Every year incidents occur in which mobile ground breaking equipment comes in contact with utility lines with costly results in loss of life and/or loss of money. In order to understand the full impact of such incidents, one would have to also include environmental damage and economic loss as a result of a service disruption.
There have been many attempts to address damage prevention when groundbreaking equipment is used around utilities and other assets that need protection. Non-exhaustive examples of these attempts include marking the location of a utility by painted lines. Commonly in the past, the utility companies and/or service companies are called to the site to place marks (spray the ground with an identifying color; for example, red for electric lines, yellow for gas lines and so forth) on the surface to show the location of a specific utility line and/or its components. However, such marking is not permanent and typically lasts only for the one earth moving operation, such as digging a trench, for which the utilities were marked.
Another approach was to make a record of the location of the utility lines as the line was placed in the earth. However, the accuracy of the location is dictated by the accuracy of the reference point. It has been found that attempting to locate a utility line based on this record has resulted in an error of up to 15 feet or more because of the inaccuracy in the position of the reference point.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method for quality control, inspection and audit of utility assets.